[rhn-users] Network Installations via RHN Proxy Servers

[inode0]

While I know there is no official support for this, everyone must do
it or arrange network installs from somewhere else. We maintain
network install trees for RHEL3, RHEL4, FC5, and FC6 currently and I
am getting tired of doing an installation and then needing to apply
hundreds of updates immediately after a fresh install.

It doesn't seem to me that it would be that difficult to update the
installation trees as packages are updated so a fresh install will be
current right after it finishes. I am quite capable of not
understanding why some things are problematic though. At least that
would be a lot nicer for users who do interactive installs.

Can someone tell me what would need to be changed in these trees? I'm
thinking some repodata mods would be required for the fedora side and
perhaps something in the base directory on the RHEL side. And then
there is the question of how to get the updated packages from RHN to
put into the trees. mrepo is the only tool I'm vaguely aware of that
allows grabbing such updates in a single location. It would be nice
though if Red Hat just accommodated the need for this directly.

Thanks,
John